The Only One Who
by Ash9
Summary: post season 5 After the events of the Kral Zera, Keith decides that he needs to go and check up on the paladins of Voltron. But unfortunately, things have...changed since he left.


"I need to visit Voltron for a few quintants," Keith told Kollivan, and the Galra leader stared at him thoughtfully before responding.

"There is always an open door for you here and a need for your abilities. Let us know when you are ready to return."

If Keith was surprised by the appreciative words, he didn't allow it to show on his face. He gave a respectful nod and walked out. As per usual at this time of day, the ship was quiet and dimly lit. Everyone was in the dining hall after a long day of work.

Keith wasn't hungry and had no one else to say goodbye to, so he packed up his Marmora uniform and his extra clothes. He put on his old black t-shirt, pants and red jacket, things he hadn't worn on the Marmora ship on principle. The other Blades grinned at him often enough as it was. Keith had a nagging feeling that as soon as he left the room they chuckled at him and called him "adorable."

He was fooling himself that he was needed here. Allura was right; the Blade of Marmora had been fighting Zarkon for ten thousand deca-phoebs without him. He didn't fit their ideal of strong, silent, heartless Blade warrior, no matter how he tried to beat down his instincts. And his time here hadn't brought him any closer to finding the supply line of quintessence and where it was actually headed.

Instead, he'd found his…mother and the dangling, uncomfortable, burned-out feelings that accompanied her person. She looked like him; she talked like him. Apparently, duty had forced her to leave him the first time and now she swore never to leave him again.

Keith clenched a fist. Wasn't that what he had wanted to hear? Back in the orphanage, in the first few foster homes, hadn't that been the hope that kept him softly smiling into the night sky? Being alone was more bearable when you thought that someone would be with you if they could, that they still loved you.

But he was no longer a child and this was a war. A small pang of conscience stirred, trying to suggest he go and say goodbye to Krolia before leaving, but it was mercilessly crushed. His conscience should _know_ by now that Keith didn't do or emotional goodbyes. Or even emotional hellos. The only exception to that rule was Shiro, who had _earned_ his place in Keith's life and was the catalyst for Keith needing to return to Voltron in the first place.

Keith left in one of the available ships and hooked into the Castle's frequency as soon as possible. He hadn't talked to them since the near-disaster with Raxela, hadn't even explained that he'd tried to save them by flying his ship into the barrier. Only Matt knew. Keith appreciated that he apparently hadn't burdened anyone else with that knowledge.

Once upon a time, that knowledge would have sent Shiro into a dangerous downward spiral because his emotions were intrinsically linked with Keith's well-being. It had been so in the past. But now…it was different—excruciatingly different. Keith gripped the steering rods tightly.

 _Stop whining! Shiro is too quiznaking important to compromise with emotional…baggage. The entire_ _ **universe**_ _needs the Black Paladin to be focused and leading Voltron!_

So this _wasn't_ a visit about _feelings_. _No._ After the Kral Zera, Keith just wanted to make sure that Lotor wasn't compromising Shiro's focus or preparing to turn traitor now that he had claimed the status of Emperor. Who knew what he had planned next? Anyone who trusted Lotor at face value was an idiot.

"Hailing Voltron. This is Keith."

"Keith?" It was Shiro's voice on the comm. and Keith's mouth tipped upward in a small smile.

"Shiro…got any room for an ex-paladin?" he said awkwardly.

There was a pause. Keith could hear Shiro working on the controls, his hands moving quickly. Keith's smile started to fade.

"How are you buddy," Shiro finally said, with a bit more warmth in his voice.

Keith would take what he could get. "It's been a while," he said, instead of answering with lies neither of them would appreciate.

"Yeah. So how far are you out?"

"Less than a varga."

"Oh…there you are. Got you on lock now."

Keith's brow furrowed. "Why are you locking onto my signal?"

"Just security protocol. So how's the Blade treating you?"

Keith caught the insincerity in Shiro's voice instantly. He was lying about why he was locking on Keith's signal. "Blade's fine. So…is Allura around? Or Lance?"

Shiro paused. "No. I'm pretty sure they're in the training room. Why are you asking about them?"

There was an awkward pause while Keith questioned everything he thought he heard in Shiro's voice. This was going badly. "Let's talk more later. I need to concentrate on flying."

"Right...you do that," Shiro responded in a tone so _off_ that it was vaguely threatening.

Keith slowed his ship down to think through his options. His heart was thudding loudly in his chest. What in the _hell_ was going on? Was there any way that he was misreading Shiro's meaning? If not, then "vaguely threatening" wasn't even covering it. How could this be _Shiro?_

"Why are you slowing down, Keith?"

Keith cut his comms, then cut the engines, floating aimlessly. No, he wasn't misreading the threat in Shiro's voice. There was a sudden sting of tears in his eyes and his instincts were screaming at him to press on to the castle. Something _had_ to be wrong there. Could Shiro be trying to warn Keith?

Then an alarm went off inside his ship and his stomach dropped. Weapons were locked on him—from the Castle of Lions.

"What the hell…?"

He reopened comms. "Shiro? What are you doing? _Shiro?"_

The Castle was headed his way.

 _"Shiro, answer me!"_

"Just coming to pick you up, buddy," Shiro said in a reassuring tone. "Don't worry."

"Then why are your quiznaking cannons locked onto me?"

"Calm down. We'll be there in half a varga."

Keith jerked the controls and sped away, but not in the direction of the Blade of Marmora. If Shiro had gone off the rails, there was no way Keith was going to lead him back to headquarters. Divide the targets. He gritted his teeth and put the craft's output at its highest level. What had happened to Shiro while he was gone?

"Keith? Stop running, it's okay," Shiro said in a soothing voice. But in the background, there were other voices sounding concerned.

"Shiro, what are you doing? Is that Keith?" Pidge.

"Wait—where's he going? He's finally here and he's already running away?" Lance.

"Shiro, um…I don't know if you've noticed this, but you're _locked_ _onto_ _Keith's_ _ship_ ," Hunk added. "So…you might not want to fire that. _No!_ Shiro… _ **don't!"**_

The Castle's long-range cannon shot a bright white beam at Keith. Shock kept him frozen in place, but somehow he managed to pull into a last-tick dive. The other paladins were yelling at Shiro now.

Keith surveyed the map ahead with agitation. Where could he hide from the Castle? It could follow him anywhere, wormhole ahead of him. And what could he do to defend himself against them? Fire at the _castle?_ With a sharp sob, he realized that he was helpless.

Shiro's calm explanation came over the comms. "That's not really Keith. It's just his voice. They're manipulating it somehow and trying to board us!"

 _ **What?**_ Keith heard the distress in Shiro's voice. He sounded genuine. In a last-ditch effort, Keith tried once more to reason with him. "Shiro, what are you talking about? It's me and I can prove it!"

But they didn't hear him. Shiro must have shut him down. The others were torn between yelling at Shiro and yelling for Keith. He forced the lava of emotions in him to cool, to stay down and let him think. Shiro had been distant, moody but this was outright betrayal…

He had to try one last time. He hailed the Castle. "Guys? Anyone? Can you hear me?"

No one answered, but the Castle had stopped its pursuit of him. The other paladins must have talked some sense into Shiro. Keith swiped at his bottom lip with his tongue; he'd gnawed through and blood was dripping down his chin. As hard as he fought to find another option, there wasn't one. He steeled himself and swerved away from the castle. He would head back to the Blade and try to figure this out.

A few ticks later, movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. And he turned to see that the black lion had just exited the Castle.

" _Oh, shit,"_ Keith breathed and jerked on the controls, giving the ship full throttle. _This can't be happening._

"Ready to play, Red?" Shiro asked over the comm, an ugly smirk in his voice.

This wasn't Shiro; it couldn't be. And whoever he was, this asshole thought Keith would be easy to take out? _Hell. No._ Keith snarled in rage, trying to force his focus to narrow down to flying—just flying his ass off.

And so began the longest, most intense chase of his life. The longer they flew, the more Keith doubted his own conclusion. This man flew like Shiro and he knew Keith's moves before he even made them. It was terrifying, to be so well known and yet the object of Shiro's…hatred.

"They want me to kill you, you know," he said conversationally at one point, after Shiro cut off Keith's escape attempt through a Ferlaxian asteroid field. The two ships floated, facing each other, so reminiscent of the time Keith had found Shiro all those months ago.

"Who are you?" Keith gritted out.

"You know who I am," Shiro said with a smile, and locked his guns on Keith once more, sending him flying away again. "You rescued me, remember? And you took care of me and you told me secrets no one else knows. But now it's time for you to go."

Keith screamed in vexation and forced his emotions to take a back seat. Sure, Shiro knew Keith and he knew his moves. But Keith knew Black and he knew his limitations. The Black Lion was slower than the Galra ship Keith flew and less maneuverable. There had to be a way to get away from Shiro.

The nearly fifteen doboshes of narrow escapes that followed began to develop a pattern. Shiro's taunts and his refusal to explain anything chipped away at Keith's composure. This was his absolute worst nightmare come to life. Shiro only had to add some dogma about Keith's fallen heritage and it would be complete. At some point, his vision washed out in a haze of endless tears that he had no way to fight. Every bit of energy he had went to surviving.

At the half-varga mark, Keith passed into the orbit of a medium-sized planet and allowed the pull of gravity to sling-shot his ship around to the other side. Shiro didn't follow. Keith veered back and away from the planet expecting at any second to see the Black Lion behind him again, or to hear Shiro's smug voice. But there was no sign of any ship and the comm remained silent.

Keith bit his bottom lip, flinched at the broken skin and breathed raggedly. He'd travelled so far that there wasn't enough fuel in the tank to return to the Blade. His options were limited and his instincts were screaming at him that Shiro wouldn't have ended this arbitrarily. There had to be a reason…

Exhausted in so many ways, Keith took refuge just inside a nearby asteroid belt. He was shaking.

It was while he was taking a much-needed drink of water from a pouch that a Galra cruiser pulled out of warp just overhead. Keith froze for one tick too long, just long enough for his brain to compute that this couldn't be a coincidence and for his heart to break because Shiro had turned him over to the Galra.

Then he tossed the water aside and grasped the controls just as the five asteroids hiding his ship were vaporized.

Keith threw his ship into a nosedive, putting everything he had into it, but all too soon, a black beam of light shot through his ship and all he knew was pain.

He was too far gone to notice when the tractor beam was activated to pull him to the ship. But as soon as he regained control of his body, his training kicked in. "Engage Blade-fail protocol," he whispered, too tired to do much else. He disengaged his suit's protective energy cells and let it fall away, leaving him in a plain gray undergarment. The suit he shoved in a special compartment where, with the turning of a hidden key, it disintegrated under a spray of chemical mist. Keith's blade was deactivated and slid into a holster beneath the seat—where it became part of an electrical conduit and would escape notice.

Keith sat back in the command chair as tremors continued to wrack his body from the quintessence strike. All around him, the ship was wiping information from its hardware and readying the last part of the Blades' protocol.

He wiped at his face in a half-assed effort to get rid of the blood and tears but probably just spread it worse. _Whatever._ He activated the video feed and glared at the camera.

"I have been captured by a Galra cruiser, a set-up instigated by the Black Paladin. There is a Druid on board ship. Have engaged Blade-fail protocol. I leave nothing but memories behind. It was an honor to be a Blade and a Paladin."

He ached to say more, but didn't know how and the recording timed out. Doubts filled his mind. Maybe he should have tried to reason with Shiro, or fought harder to speak to the other Paladins, but….it was too late now. Whoever viewed this tape would understand he was beyond his limits and had done his best.

Keith took a deep breath and turned a key, opening a section of paneling. There was a bright red button, blinking ominously. Another wash of tears leaked from Keith's eyes and he pressed the button. Instantly, the video was broadcast to a secure Blade line and wiped from the ship's hardware. Inside the ship, fine red dust filled the air. Keith's lungs began to seize up. Less and less air made it in with each breath until he could get no more at all. He gripped the armrests and kept his body still, forcing it to accept the inevitable.

A bright flash of light made him close his eyes and he saw moments from his life—some he recognized and some he'd never seen before. Had he really been _that_ small? Had his parents looked down at him with that much love? Then they were both gone and his life went by in a flurry of misery and pain, so much he didn't want to remember.

Finally, Shiro's kind smile broke through the endless haze of loneliness and signaled the advent of the better years. So many good memories flashed by before the year of Kerberos and the misery that followed. Then came Shiro's rescue and Voltron and the other paladins all bound together in the joy of flying and fighting together for a common cause. Keith finally belonged.

Until the one-two punch of the revelation of his parentage and Shiro's second disappearance. So much despair and upheaval and then, he was finding the new Shiro who didn't look at Keith the same and in whose eyes lay the seeds of Keith's destruction. This time, it was easy to see that his arrival was the beginning of the end and that the Galra had, indeed, taken everything from Keith that mattered. They had won.

 _But it doesn't matter now...nothing matters…_

The red mist had done its job. Next, the ship fried its wiring, melted the door to slag and powered down automatically. All was quiet inside the ship, even though a countdown had begun. There was no sound, not even that of a heartbeat. But outside, there was a loud _**clunk**_ and a whirring sound.

Keith was slumped in the pilot's seat, eyes closed, head lowered, hair falling forward to cover his face. He was dead—his mind thoughtless, his heart still, but ten ticks later, his ship was dragged on board the Galra cruiser.

The Galra had his ship open in under a dobosh and they pulled him roughly from his seat. A Druid stood ready to resuscitate him. When the ship finally blew as its last command from the Blade-fail protocol, it took nearly forty Galra soldiers with it.

The Druid guarded herself from the explosion in the nick of time and kept it from destroying the outer hull of the ship and her captive. With a flash of black quintessence that briefly animated Keith's lifeless body, the Druid lifted him and fitted a breathing apparatus over his mouth and nose. Within a few ticks, his body was forced to breathe, restoring oxygen to his brain and keeping him, once again, alive.

He was, after all, a person of _value_ , according to Haggar. The Black Paladin had told her so many, many times.


End file.
